On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1860. Full Description:

DARWIN, Charles. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Faces in the Struggle for Life. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1860.

First American edition, first issue, with two quotations on the verso of the half-title. One of only 1,500 copies printed. Octavo (7 5/8 x 5 inches; 195 x 125 mm). 432 pp. Folding lithographed diagram (speciation tree) facing p, 108.

Original dark brown bead-grain cloth with covers decoratively stamped in blind and spine ruled in gilt and blind and lettered in gilt. Original dark brown coated endpapers. A minor amount of foxing throughout. Page 70 with previous owner's marginal notes in red pencil. A small blindstamp to front flyleaf. Overall a near fine copy of the extremely scarce first issue of the first American edition. Housed in a custom black morocco clamshell.

One of the most influential scientific works of the nineteenth century, On the Origina of Species was (and still is) one of the most controversial. In it "Darwin not only drew an entirely new picture of the workings of organic nature; he revolutionized our methods of thinking and our outlook on the natural order of things. The recognition that constant change is the order of the universe had been finally established and a vast step forward in the uniformity of nature had been taken" (Printing and the Mind of Man).

Although published the same year as the second English edition, the text of the first American edition (with the two stereo reprints of the same year) is identical to the first English edition (Freeman 373), with the whale-bear story surviving intact.

Freeman 377. Grolier/Horblit 23b ("the most influential scientific work of the nineteenth century") and Printing and the Mind of Man 344b (describing the 1859 first edition).

HBS 68790.

$20,000.